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## How the Blurry Photo of Your Cat Relates to These Moon Photos

You posted a photo of your cat a while ago that was blurry, and I was trying to figure out why.

Normally, I can tell the difference between motion blur and focus blur, but it was difficult to tell in that photo.

## Causes of Motion Blur in Photos

In the second moon photo, the one where the clouds are covering the moon, it looks like motion blur to me. When I've taken photos at night with a low shutter speed, I've noticed that even if I think I was perfectly still, the photo can still come out blurry (because of my breathing or my body shaking). Yours shouldn't have that because you were using a tripod.

There's actually two types of motion blur. There's the one where you shake the camera, and there's the one where what you're taking a photo of moves.

Usually you can tell the difference because if your camera shook, the whole photo is blurry, and if the thing you were taking a photo of moved, just that thing is blurry.

It can be a combinyation of both, of course.

The mirror system in your camera, as well as automatic stabilization (your camera probably doesn't have that, but mine does) can cause blurry (motion blur blurry) photos at 1 - 4 second exposures.

When the mirror flips up, it can cause the camera to shake, which makes the photo blurry. You can compensate for that by using a faster shutter speed or flipping up the mirror before taking the photo.

In the photo where the clouds are off to the side, that looks more like focus blur to me. The solution for that would be to be very careful when manually focusing the lens. I usually twist the focus ring so the entire viewfinder looks out of focus, and then I slowly twist it back and wait for the object in the viewfinder to "just" pop into focus. After I do that, I take the photo.

## Possible Solution

Perhaps you could take "test" photos? I know it's a bit of a waste of film, but when you're taking a photo, maybe you could stop down the shutter speed to see if it comes out any better. That might underexpose parts of the photo though.

## Using Reference Points

In the end, you want to know "what works best." Maybe you find that the photos come out better if you stop down the shutter speed from the camera's recommended exposure, or maybe you find that stopping down the aperture from the camera's recommended exposure works better (or maybe the opposite?)

I think it's good to have a reference point. You start with XYZ settings, and then you change them in a specific way, and you see if that works better or worse than the reference point (how the photo came out before). If they do come out better, you make those settings your new reference point.

So you might start with "1/60, f/5.6, ISO 100" as your reference (they can be any numbers, but you want them to be close as possible to what you think will work). If those settings work well in a given condition, you use that as your reference point, and you try using a faster shutter speed from that point (or whatever you want) and you see if that works better.

It should look like this in your mind:

WORSE / BETTER / WORSE

You want to be chasing where it's better (it will be worse on either side of "better." I know that's pretty abstract, but it's what I use).

It's a process of changing your reference point to see what works best, and knowing the outer limits of what you can get away with (Can I underexpose by a stop here, or would it ruin the photo? Can I overexpose it?)

In darker situations, it might be a bit safer to overexpose than underexpose. You don't know exactly what'll work but you want to stay "on the safer side" if you know where that is. So part of learning to do that is predicting what "safe settings are."

Even if the exposure isn't perfect, that gives you information that you can use for next time you take a photo (try to use safer settings next time).

I hope any of that made sense. For me, it's about knowing what settings make sense in the camera, and trying to stay on the safer side if possible.

One thing more:

Even if it doesn't come out right, having a photo is always better than not having a photo. 🍀